10/07/2014

I was a bit dubious that an primarily electronic band would be good live. Boy was I proven wrong! Broken Bells had a tremendously clean performance with excellent flow between songs. The performance in a small venue like Iron City Birmingham was intimate, personal and sound filled. The band kept the audience fully engaged.

With four members, the band had a full sound with drums and bass guitar providing a solid foundation and either synthesizers or electric guitar providing the melodic lead. James Mercer (formerly of The Shins) carries the performance with his flawless tenor, with Brian Burton (a.k.a. Danger Mouse) providing a tremendous, in your face level of support for the duo. Dan Elken provides solid backing vocals and guitar while Jon Sortland is an absolute pleasure to watch on drums. Sortland's drumming is solid and extremely entertaining.

Together, the four touring members of Broken Bells deliver a solid, well done performance that I highly recommend!

02/19/2012

It's been quite a while since I made any postings here…seems that my life has gotten a bit off track from the blueprint. It's astounding how quickly things can build up and steal away a person's focus (or desired focus). So, as they say, no better time than the present to get started again.

We recently spent a couple of hours with some friends at Featherdown Farms, a local horse farm and riding school, during one of their competitions. Unfortunately, none of my photos of the actual competition turned out very well. I may need a new lens (wink, wink, nudge, nudge Mardi!). The low light and fast action didn't make for very good photos without a fast lens.

But, we were able to spend some time back in the stables with a few of the horses and who doesn't like photos of horses? A slideshow is below.

09/24/2011

If there were any doubts about the power of social media to turn an industry upside down, look at the recording industry. The story of the band Cults at the Austin City Limits Festival is included below.

ACL is a powerful venue. Has been for years. I remember watching ACL on PBS back in the 70s and 80s, even today when I can catch it, and seeing great bands, singers and songwriters. Some were famous, some not so much. But a great venue nonetheless.

Cults is a great indie group. They have a loyal following. But over half a million views? Comparable to the mega group Coldplay? That's social media power.

The recording industry has nothing to do with it.

It's all the fans.

The fans have the power now in all music genres.

Except for maybe Top 40 radio which still seems to think that they are the buzz makers - they are heavily influenced by the recording industry - thus the demise of Top 40 radio.

Good on ya Cults!

Good on ya ACL!

Good on ya fans!

Keep it up!

Something phenomenal happened during our Austin City Limits Festival live webcast this past weekend. A band blew up right before our eyes DURING the Festival weekend. It happened online. And it further proved that in 2011 Festival webcasts are making a difference for artists.

Full disclosure: I produce the live webcasts and the video at the ACL Festival (and Lollapalooza and Coachella).

Here’s what happened.

In addition to the live webcast of 50 bands, we were asked by YouTube if we could clear at least 4 artist-approved songs for the online Archives by the end of Friday night. If so, they would promote these videos on the YT Home Page on Saturday, and drive traffic to the ACLFestival page. We scrambled and got approved titles from Coldplay, Foster the People, Brandi Carlile, and Smith Westerns. And an emerging band called Cults, who played first-up on Friday at 11:45am, in front of a few hundred on a small stage, just about the lowest slot at the Fest.

The YT Home Page promo went up mid-Saturday. By midnight on Saturday 160,000 people has streamed the VOD of Cults buzzed-about song ‘Go Outside.’ At that point Coldplay’s new single Paradise was at 150,000 streams. Foster’s hit also had big numbers. By Sunday the Cults number was 320,000; Coldplay tracking right with them. As of Tuesday evening when I’m writing this, uber-stars Coldplay are at 502,817 streams, and Cults are right there at 502,416. Five Hundred Thousand Streams in 4 days!!! It’s not a dancing cat or a cute baby. It’s a song. I knew Cults had a buzz, but WOW.

All these videos and dozens more below:

I just like this story.

Young band, barely out of the basement, gets blog love, still getting their shit together, hasn’t toured much, record just out. Then HUGE CRAZY numbers of fans find them this week online, and see that they are cool. And this costs the band nothing. The label didn’t do it. The festival promoters (C3 Presents) made this happen (and YouTube, more on them later). Everyone on the band’s team gets jazzed. They sell-out more shows. Get to make more records. Rock ‘n Roll lives to fight another day.

And it’s surely not our video genius that’s making this happen. Frankly, our video for Cults is not so damn good. It was Noon (!), first band of the first day, our smallest stage, director hasn’t settled in, doesn’t even know his cameramen’s names yet. It’s 101 degrees in Texas, band is barely awake, crowd is just arriving. We only had 3 cameras working there, so I’m just thrilled we even caught it properly. It’s all live/live, no edits, no remix. But a hit’s a hit!

Cults are far from the only ones to benefit from Fest webcasts. At Coachella the indie-band Freelance Whales told me they vaulted into the top Twitter Trends during their webcast performance. Foster the People at Lolla got crazy numbers for their perf video of Pumped Up Kicks. Coldplay has blogged repeatedly about their Festival webcasts, and the traffic has followed. My Morning Jacket’s's online fans came back to the band with tons of love for their Lolla and ACL shows. Just a few examples, but literally every band connects.

So what changed in 2011? It’s on YouTube, that’s what. You need a great Festival, committed promoters, and a sponsor who wants to be part of it all. But YouTube brings it to the people globally, and then let’s them know it’s there. At Coachella, we cleared Arcade at 5pm on showday, and Kanye at 8pm on showday, and YouTube still got the word out. They sit in our trucks all weekend, and tweak the user experience non-stop. And get this, they care about the music. I’m telling you, they are passionate.

09/10/2011

Click the photo above to get to a really nice post about photographer Roberto Dutesco and his gallery exhibition The Last of the Wild Horses. Some haunting and beautiful black and white photography from one of the most inaccessible and remote places on earth.

09/08/2011

We're going to be seeing a lot of the retrospectives over the next few days, but this one from The Atlantic magazine is very compelling and moving. Warning - some images are disturbing, but are an integral part of the full story.

09/07/2011

We've had some terrible flooding in Maryland today. I've included a gallery of photos below from the area in Parkton where Little Falls passes underneath York Road. Most of the photos were taken from the parking lot of Elizabeth Jacobs Salon.

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About Jonathan

My
name is Jonathan Hasson and I’m a man on a mission…a mission to
discover as much as I can of the blueprint that God has for me. So far,
the blueprint has held many surprises, some tears and many blessings. It’s
taken me to a place today where I sometimes refer to myself as an
engineer with a creative side hiding inside, dying to escape. That’s
probably an exaggeration...